Homer Quotes
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"My brain reels," moaned Homer the man. " Reality melts away."
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More Homer Quotes
Money appears as measure (in Homer, e.g. oxen) earlier than as medium of exchange, because in barter each commodity is still its own medium of exchange. But it cannot be its own or its own standard of comparison.
karl marx— Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 93
Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
— 1460.a19
— Variant: It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets;Jonson was theVirgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakespeare.
john dryden— 1668 An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,'Shakespeare and Ben Jonson Compared'.
Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. I am vexed when the worthy Homer nods.
— Ars Poetica, l.359.
Helen, did Homer never see Thy beauties, yet could write of thee?
Ben Jonson— The Underwood,'An Ode' (published1640).
Have I not made blind Homer sing to me?
Christopher Marlowe— c.1592 Doctor Faustus (published1604), act 2, sc.2.
Though I've never read a line of Homer I believe the Greekof today is essentially unchanged.If anything he is more Greek than he ever was.
— 1941The Colossus of Maroussi, pt.1.
As learned commentators view In Homer than Homer knew.
jonathan swift— 1733 'On Poetry', l.103-4.
In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven, the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz.
modest mussorgsky— Letter to Vladimir Stassov, October 18, 1872; Oskar von Riesemann (trans. Paul England) Moussorgsky (1929) p. 107.
Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. We do not need the praises of a Homer, or of anyone else whose words may delight us for the moment, but the estimation of facts will fall short of what is really true.
Pericles— As quoted in Eternal Greece (1961) by Rex Warner, p. 34
The Trojan War without Homer was nothing more than a battle over trade routes.
b. w. powe— Interlude, p. 113
Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare.
george saintsbury— A Last Scrap Book (London: Macmillan, 1924) p. 42
It was Homer who gave laws to the artist.
francis wayland— The Iliad and the Bible, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 45.
It was Homer who inspired the poet.
francis wayland— The Iliad and the Bible, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 609.
When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a god, he said smiling, "That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith, ‘such humour as distils from blessed gods.'"
Plutarch— 43 Alexander.
Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his skillet, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?" Antagoras replied, "Do you think, O king, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers?"
Plutarch— 46 Antigonus I.
Themistocles being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, "Which would you rather be, a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors?"
Plutarch— 48 Themistocles.
When you come down to it, has there ever been a genuine polytheism? Even Homer supposes a sort of fundamental unity of the divine that permits the gods to identify themselves as gods, even when they dwell far from one another ( Odyssey 5.79ff.). What the [monotheistic] revelations bring is, rather, the end of a "cosmotheism" that makes no radical distinction between the divine and the physical.
— Rémi Brague, interviewed by Christophe Cervellon and Kristell Trego, from Rémi Brague, The Legend of the Middle Ages, University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 1–22.
In poetry there are two giants, rough Homer and fine Shakespere. In music likewise we have two giants, Beethoven , the thinker, and the superthinker Berlioz .
— Letter to Vladimir Stassov, October 18, 1872; Oskar von Riesemann (trans. Paul England) Moussorgsky (1929) p. 107.
Seven cities warr'd for Homer being dead, Who living had no roofe to shroud his head.
thomas heywood— Thomas Heywood, Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells.
Indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. I'm aggrieved when sometimes even excellent Homer nods.
— Horace, in Ars Poetica.
In the Odyssey one may liken Homer to the setting sun, of which the grandeur remains without the intensity.
— Longinus, in On the Sublime.
Homer, the sovereign poet.
— Dante Alighieri, in Divina Commedia.
Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. We do not need the praises of a Homer, or of anyone else whose words may delight us for the moment, but the estimation of facts will fall short of what is really true.
— As quoted in Eternal Greece (1961) by Rex Warner, p. 34
When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a god, he said smiling, "That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith, ‘such humour as distils from blessed gods.'"
— 43 Alexander. (Others)
[ Homer 's] Fire burns with extraordinary Heat and Vehemence ... Virgil's is a clearer and a chaster Flame ...
— Richard Blackmore, Preface to King Arthur (1697).
This Fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected from Homer , more shining than fierce, but every where equal and constant.
Alexander Pope— Alexander Pope, Preface to Homer's Iliad (1715).
